The present disclosure relates generally to network monitoring and control and more specifically, to monitoring and controlling traffic associated with users of a network.
With increase emphasis on profitability and efficient operations, operators of networks (both service providers (SPs) and enterprises) are focusing on the specific use of bandwidth and network resources consumed by their subscribers and the classes of traffic that are being generated. Service providers and enterprise network operators offer Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs) to their users. Most users and subscribers abide by these agreements, but in typical networks there is a reasonably sized minority of users that attempt to use more than their share of network bandwidth, which results in inefficiencies with respect to the shared infrastructure. This type of behavior can have a significant impact on shared resource systems. In order to limit the impact of users abusing their share of system resources, network operators are forced to invest in resources that monitor, control, and limit such behavior.
Layer 4 to layer 7 network devices, which provide intelligent application traffic management capabilities, including inspection, access control, and bandwidth management, may be used to monitor and control network traffic. This layer 4-7 inspection and control requires orders of magnitudes more processing power by the network devices than the basic function of packet forwarding at layer 3. Conventional use of layer 4-layer 7 control products to measure and enforce SLAs and AUPs for each network user therefore requires large amounts of dedicated hardware.
Corresponding reference characters indicate corresponding parts throughout the several views of the drawings.